


Don't Wake Up Dead

by Gryffindorable



Series: Alone Together [2]
Category: Agent Carter (TV), Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Kinda, Multi, OCs - Freeform, Redemption, a little bit of polyamory, also TRIPP LIVES, and he deserved better, everything is not as it seems, he got a sucky death, mostly because Tripp loves the science babies, seriously there was some hardcore canon flirting, they're pretty important, yay
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-25
Updated: 2015-08-25
Packaged: 2018-04-17 04:18:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4651989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gryffindorable/pseuds/Gryffindorable
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She introduces herself at last, as though Ward doesn’t already know her name, lips twisting into a desperate, demented smile. Ward matches it; she’ll let him help her, fix her, in a way that Cara never could and Skye never would.<br/>------<br/>This is the redemption arc.<br/>Except it doesn't really start out that way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Wake Up Dead

**Author's Note:**

> So I know this starts off strange. Honestly, t's gonna get weirder in chapter two, then it'll be a bit more normal for a while. Basically, I want all the babies to end up happy, so I'm writing this. It's set in the same universe as Room for One More Troubled Soul (Fall Out Boy, anyone?), and it's on the same update-in-time-with-actual-date schedule. This chapter takes place earlier this summer, but pretty much everything else takes place from September to about June of 2016, and I'll try and update accordingly.  
> Ooh, disclaimer.  
> I'm in college. All I own are textbooks and thrift store clothing. Sadly, no Marvel.

A dark-haired woman sits alone in a booth of a rundown diner, listening to forgotten tunes forced out by a half-dead jukebox. She meticulously pours one sugar packet into her coffee, then another, ignoring the artificial substitutes in the little tin on the table. She adds three small containers of cream, then glances languidly around the restaurant as she stirs her drink, simply for lack of anything better to do.

            A scar, a red ridge that smooths to white at its edges, glosses across her cheekbone, stopping just beyond her brown eye. It’s only visible when she takes her first distracted sip, tucking her loose waves behind her ear. She doesn’t bother repeating the action when they fall back against her face, seemingly too focused on her thoughts and her coffee.

            She’ll finish it, she’ll get up, she’ll pay, and she’ll leave – only to return in a few hours for a glass of the sweet tea the diner’s started making at her request.

            The woman is a creature of habit – the same routine, day in and day out. Ward would have picked up on that quickly enough, even if his men hadn’t been tailing her for the past week.

            Not once has she met with anyone, reported to _anyone_. She wanders around the town all day, spends most of her time at the memorial for the Battle of New York, then makes her way to the town’s only bar, tossing back a mint julep before switching to something harder.

            She’s broken, Ward thinks, watching her gaze sadly at the inside of a locket around her neck, and maybe a little lost. It doesn’t matter, though, because he can help her. He can _fix_ her.

            So it’s time for contact.

            “Mind if I join you?” he asks quietly, trailing one hand along the edge of the Formica tabletop.

            The woman looks up, startled from her reverie by even his softest voice. “Oh, pardon me,” she murmurs, dropping her locket back against her chest. “Of course. I’m sorry, have we met?”

            “We ran into each other the other day,” he explains, slipping gracefully onto the cracked vinyl bench across from her. “At the memorial. Name’s Grant. Grant Ward.”

            The woman offers him a warm smile, weak as it is.

            “That’s a lovely necklace,” he redirects smoothly. He hasn’t need to charm anyone in a while – since Cara – but smooth isn’t something that gets rusty.

            “Oh, it’s of my daughter, Janie,” she gushes without further prompting, leaning across the table to display the picture inside.

            “She is _gorgeous_ ,” he says, eyeing the dark-haired girl. “Takes after her mother, I guess. So where is the little angel? Her dad’s weekend, I hope?”

            Of course not. Ward knows that, but _she_ has to tell him. That’s how this _works_.

            As expected, tears well up in the woman’s chocolate eyes, too real and raw for Ward to even consider she’s faking, and she jerks back into herself. “She’s with her daddy and the Good Lord, above.”

            And _that’s_ why the woman is so broken.

            “I’m sorry,” he offers, contorting his face to display a perfectly calculated concern. “I… I don’t know what to say. I’m _so_ sorry.”

            “It was – we were in New York,” the woman tells him, her lilted voice wavering. Ward already knows, of course. “Those god-forsaken fish things knocked a buildin’ over. My baby girl got _crushed_ _under_ _it_ because a flock of buffoons with masks didn’t stop those… _extraterrestrials_ fast enough.”

            “You blame them,” Ward realizes. Except not really.

            “Honey, I would sell the Devil my soul if it meant tearin’ apart their neat little blasé lives,” she intones, the quietness of her voice doing little to offset its ferocity.

            Doesn’t she realize she’s about to?

            A long moment passes, and the woman distracts herself with her coffee once more, shaking hands stirring in a packet of Splenda.

            “What if I could offer you closure?” he finally asks. “What if I could make sure you got to rip apart the life of each and every Avenger?”

            “Sarah,” she introduces at last, as though Ward doesn’t already know her name, lips twisting into a desperate, demented smile. Ward matches it; she’ll let him _help_ her, _fix_ her, in a way that Cara never could and Skye never would. “I would say that my name is Sarah Nathalie Barnes, and it would be my _pleasure_ to work with you.”

**Author's Note:**

> So? Whaddaya think?


End file.
